Using an image from the Hubble telescope as my reference, I began dipping my toes into painting the cosmos to practice for my current series in progress, Perspectives. When I first started painting these spacescapes, it was tedious and difficult. In fact, about halfway through I clearly remember asking myself what I was thinking. Yet, I pushed through as I always do and came to a place where I was happy with my product. Now that I've painted a number of them, I am more able to see the process start to finish before I begin, and I can paint through them confidently.
Star Forming Region S106 has been one of the most popular among my viewers and actually recently sold to collector! Super exciting!!
A description from NASA's website:
Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106 Nebula (S106), featured here. A large disk of dust and gas orbiting Infrared Source 4 (IRS 4), visible in brown near the image center, gives the nebula an hourglass or butterfly shape. S106 gas near IRS 4 acts as an emission nebula as it emits light after being ionized, while dust far from IRS 4 reflects light from the central star and so acts as a reflection nebula. Detailed inspection of a recent infrared image of S106 reveal hundreds of low-mass brown dwarf stars lurking in the nebula's gas. S106 spans about 2 light-years and lies about 2000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).
Doesn't it just blow your mind that these beauties exist way out there? It's one of the many things I reflect on while painting these.
Thanks for looking!
